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Tuesday, December 07, 2010

Broken Records - Let Me Come Home

At the same time that frontman Jamie Sutherland found himself obsessed with films like Rumblefish, Badlands and East Of Eden and albums by Nick Cave and Springsteen, Edinburgh’s Broken Records sat down in the singer’s kitchen and started working on some lo-fi acoustic efforts. Eventually fleshed out into a full band sound, the six-piece’s new album remains, however, much more sparse than the rich and sweeping orchestration of their debut.

That’s not to say this is a lo-fi record. Not at all. There are still strings and huge choruses aplenty, but there is certainly a more organic, less cluttered feel to Let Me Come Home. That said, they certainly still throw plenty at their songs, which has inevitably led to the somewhat lazy comparisons to Arcade Fire that you can read in pretty much any Broken Records review ever written. Admittedly, the songs do march and rumble along, and Let Me Come Home also has a touch of The Killers about it. This isn’t as bad as it might sound, as at least when Broken Records do occasionally sound like a Scottish Killers, it is their Springtseen era rather than their annoyingly pink-jacketed, I’ve-got-soul-but-I’m-not-a-soldier period.

This is not an album in which the obvious singles jump out at you, nor is it perfect for the impending Australian summer. However, while it is bleak and earnest, Let Me Come Home is also rousing with moments of tenderness. It takes the dour and the day-to-day heartbreak of life and wraps them in strings and soulful vocals until there is romance and beauty dripping from them. And it’s all done in a typically unpretentious Scottish way of course.